Previous Post We really don't know much (If anything.) about him, do we? Obadiah Stane we DID get an origin for, and we did understand what made him tick. I personally think that he was better than Hammer (And ruined Tony's life more.) because when you really think about it, Hammer was just kind of there and more of a plot device (The whole bankrolling villains thing.). I remember his daughter Justine (Doesn't he have another daughter?) getting an origin story in The Thunderbolts. I forgot, who was the mother again? Actually, when was the last time that we saw Justine? Has she been seen since Secret Wars? Thanks.

He is the banker, money launderer & weapons provider of street-level villains. He is the opposite of Tony Stark because is the player on the other side :
Tony Stark funds the Avengers and provides weapons to SHIELD.
Justin Hammer funds supervillains & provides weapons to anybody who can buy them.

He is the ultimate white collar criminal and, thus, the ultimate pragmatist, an amoral international businessman residing in a tax haven, financing supervillains and providing weapons to whoever pays him. He has to kill Tony Stark because business is business and competition has to be destroyed. In my opinion, Justin Hammer is the equivalent of Goldfinger in the Iron-Verse. Much more than anybody else in the Marvel Universe (except, perhaps, the forgotten Mordecai Midas), he is Greed incarnate.

I think that Justin Hammer & Taskmaster were both created by David Michelinie to explain how the supervillain underworld works. One funds them and provides weapons. The other trains them and provides minions. Together they were supposed to be the back-office of the supervillain community.

David Michelinie often creates supervillains who are based on a simple concept and who have very simple backstories (Taskmaster, Ghost, Chance, Styx & Stone, Carnage, Life Foundation, etc). It is only when Ghost became one of the protagonists of the Thunderbolts that his backstory was told (to some extent : Ghost himself said that he may have lied about his own past).

Justin Hammer is a simple villain but not every major villain has to have a convoluted past or a complex motivation. When you think about it, the Joker himself is based on a very simple concept. It is only his popularity which allowed multiple writers to imagine very different stories about him.